Vietnam... a year on

On the JAL flight, over the seas and mountains to Vietnam... so many thoughts and emotions... how is it going to feel when we're back in Vietnam? Yes, there's all the things we want to do straight away when we're back... have a really good bowl of Pho with loads of chilli... Bun Cha with extra pork fat, steak tartare at Cafe des Artes.. catch up with friends... what will the traffic be like??? will the noise be tolerable??? will the bike work and so on.

Landed in Noi Bai, and exit the plane, smells of Vietnam. Moist carpets and humidity in the airport. Visa on arrival for the first time - entering one of the last bastion of oppressive communism - if you believe the anti-Vietnam propoganda, and met by the Visa officials, who seem to be playing a game of "catchy-kissy" in the Visa office. One young guy in a uniform sees me, and grabs his hat, tries to put on a serious face and stop giggling, takes our passports and tells us "just a minute sir", then chases his female colleague around the room... in a minute our visas are ready, and a polite Xin Chao (responded by a "Welcome to my country") to the immigration officer... 25 minutes after landing, we're in a taxi to downtown. Blurting out my first Vietnamese utterances in a year, learn that it' been very hot here the past month, lots of power cuts and floods too, though the weather is getting better, oh yes, and apparently I speak Vietnamese like a Vietnamese... Nice complement, though I can't remember how to say "close to" or "near by" in Vietnamese, all I can think of is "mas circa", which may, or may not be Spanish.

That aside, we arrive, almost directly, to our guesthouse, and our two week mission - locate and move our stored "things", select a shipping company, regroup our finances, and push through... move to Phnom Penh and begin the new adventure and chapter, whilst catching up with some old friends and (for me) finding some work!

And it's a small world too. Staying at the Daluva guesthouse... turns out that the manager of Daluva is the brother of Kim - Kim and Todd who we met in Easter Island, and who are coming to stay in the Guesthouse too while we're staying here... Really, a small world!

Tomorrow's the big day, packing up our things with the moving company... and it's fitting that we're leaving for Phnom Penh on the 8th August, we left exactly a year ago... on our flight to Sydney (with Mike and Hang), to meet our delayed flight to Auckland! How time flies... make the most of it, you've only got one time!!!! To be continued in Cambodia!